Originally Posted by
allycat53
I was trying to book 2 x J Avios seats for LGW-MRU at 0100 this morning by calling, having missed them earlier in the week just trying to do them online. Called the UK gold line at 0045 as it is now supposed to be 24 hour. Went through menus then it cut me off. Called again, then it seemed to divert into a queue I wasn't expecting with different music & hold messages. After a couple of minutes I hung up and tried the USA Gold line. The agent on that line said it was a "sales line" and he could not do an avios booking even though I had selected the new avios booking options; he gave me a different number to call which turned out to be the USA Blue line. The agent there said "all ticketing systems are down and no one can make any bookings at the moment, call tomorrow please". In parallel to the call to that USA Blue line, I was also trying to book it online, and low and behold, the systems were NOT down and there were still 4 seats available, and I did secure the 2 I was looking for. The other 2 had also gone by the time I completed mine.
Question: Has anyone actually been successful with t-355 avios bookings at 0100 BST on the "new" 24 hour gold line?
Summary: It is still unclear which number you can call to get a successful booking at 0000 GMT / 0100 BST, and some agents just don't want to do the work IMHO so fob you off with "wrong line / systems down / other" excuses.
Moral: be flexible with dates you want as you can't always get what you want first time, and run a parallel attempt online as well as on the phone.
Following my experience above, I logged a complaint about the new 24/7 Gold line number not working to get me to an agent in good time and then the two aborted USA calls. The complaint got closed automatically by some bot or other within 12 hours saying "
Thanks for taking the time to contact us. We understand why you needed to get in touch." but no actual answer to the complaint. So I then raised a new complaint asking them to reopen the first one as it had not been resolved. Today, 2 days later, I actualy got a call from a real human to discuss the complaint. I explained the frustration of having such inconsistency between staff and numbers to call and whether they will do what you want them to etc. She listened carefully, made some comments about how BA systems are not the best, there's lots of competition for high demand premium seats at 0000/0100, etc etc. I told her I knew all this but the frequent flyer community is just exasperated about the inconsistency and inability to get staff to do their job when you do get a call answered through one of the numbers that they provide. She recommended I try 03444 930 787 next time, and when I googled that it is the basic BA "call for anything" number which closes at 23:59 ... god help us.